


cruel tricks the gods play

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Shipwreck, Suicidal Thoughts, if you came here for sensical wizard magic or physics then I have nothing for you, in which the peace talks go very badly, lost at sea, magical inconsistencies, worth mentioning that a few lines come across somewhat as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: The peace talks between the Dynasty and the Empire end in flames, an explosion destroying their ship and scattering their group to the winds. It just so happens that Caleb and Essek are stranded together in the middle of an ocean, only inches apart and stuck that way.The gods are cruel in the tricks they play.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 11
Kudos: 292





	cruel tricks the gods play

**Author's Note:**

> This was so self-indulgent and it's STILL angsty as hell because I have exactly one setting and it's angsty pining.

“You know, this is not how I imagined this would go,” Essek muses. The half-burned raft they lay on is cold and damp, but nowhere near the chill of the ocean every time the tide washes over them. 

“No, I don’t imagine this turned out as anyone expected,” Caleb responds. It had become very clear quite quickly that the partially destroyed wood was not a suitable surface on which to inscribe a teleportation circle, and after what had happened when the peace talks had devolved, Essek was certainly in no shape to cast spells difficult enough to transport them instantly back to Rosohna.

“Do you suppose the Empire has declared us all traitors yet?” he wonders, and Essek gives a small nasally breath of amusement. 

“Oh, I’m sure,” he answers, not daring to shift much where they both lay side by side, for fear that their one method of clinging to life might abandon them. “And I’m sure that the Bright Queen has exiled me for my part in this disaster.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Caleb says softly, and the remorse is heavy enough to sink them both. Essek turns to look at him beneath the gibbous moon, a galaxy of stars overhead. He had almost forgotten what stars looked like, living in that eternal darkness. Now he will likely die beneath them. “You did not start shit.”

“Ah, but I was party to what happened after.” He’s quiet among the waves, the rush of the water a rhythmic reminder of their fate.

“You were defending yourself.”

“They never intended to return the beacon,” Essek hisses. He wishes he could curl into himself and drown. He wishes he had the energy to levitate, so he wouldn’t be laying in this godforsaken ocean. But right now all he has the energy to do is breathe, knowing that even if he succumbs to the sea, he will remember this in twenty years and likely die again of the shame. 

Even with the Empire’s—the Assembly’s—plot foiled, the beacon still rests in Caleb’s palms, a beautiful weight on his stomach. It is the only reminder that they may not return to the Dynasty a complete failure—assuming they find a way to return to the Dynasty.

They have been resting here with no sign of rescue for hours now, since the early evening, and the sun will rise in a few hours, and in the sunlight he will certainly not have the strength to cast such advanced magic. His sensitive eyes are a blessing now, while he can watch Caleb’s eyes shift behind their closed lids, but they will not help him in the daylight. 

“No, no,” Caleb agrees. His rage had been fierce and swift when the old mage’s trick had come to light, the deck of the ship igniting around the Empire’s representatives, with a violence that Essek had never witnessed on Caleb’s face, the shifting shadows the flames cast in his skin and his eyes only a fraction of the darkness Essek could sense behind it. 

The most senior members of the Empire had escaped, unsurprisingly, but they’d left behind a parting gift, an explosion that had ripped the Balleater apart, sending the Mighty Nein in every direction. Essek only knew what had happened to Caleb, and even their fate was uncertain.

“And to think they have another one…” Essek ran a hand through his soaked white hair, pushing it back from where it clung to his forehead. Now that he had met these people, had seen their tactics, he’s already formulating plans to infiltrate the Assembly and find the other one they had under lock and key. He sighs and pushes his hair back yet again as the water disturbs it. “I am sorry about your boat.”

Caleb smiles wryly. Through it all, his eyes have remained closed, yet Essek cannot tear his eyes away from the two things there are to see here: the stars, and Caleb. “I’m sure we can find another one. That is why we sent the crew away, after all. We knew that the Assembly could not be trusted.”

“Who was that man? Ikithon, was his name? He seemed to know you.”

All of the lines on Caleb’s face turn to stone for a moment, an almost instantaneous shift, as though the Caleb beside him has shifted into an alternate one, another trick of dunamancy. But no, he’s the same person, laying here half submerged, and Essek wishes for half a second to reach out and smooth every fear and anxiety from his face. 

“Ja, ah, he was my teacher.”

He sees the tightened fingers around the void that is the beacon, the spidery scars crawling up Caleb’s wrists into his sleeves in strange patterns that almost look like runes, though he can’t see enough of them to tell. He wracks his brain for memories of Caleb with his sleeves rolled up, pouring over spell books and scrolls and notes, perhaps in the Xhorhaus hot tub. He thinks they must be some kind of magic, whatever they were meant for, but now they are raised white lines, paler still against Caleb’s already pale skin. 

He doesn’t ask what happens, as much as he wants to know. Imagining the man next to him studying under the cruel mage who stood in front of him hours ago and lied to his face is… laughable, to say the least. He doesn’t laugh, not here under this sky, but he wants to. 

No, Caleb keeps talking of his own accord. With their current predicament, Essek supposes that Caleb believes this to be a kind of final confession, so he listens, and doesn’t interrupt, barely contains his own horror and rage as Caleb explains his tutelage at the hand’s of Trent Ikithon, all in the same numb voice that he only uses when he needs to hold himself together. 

And Essek wants to roll onto his side and wrap his arms around Caleb’s shoulders, aid him in that endeavor, but they both discovered hours ago what happens if either of them moves more than an inch.

A cruel trick of the universe, perhaps, that this feels like it is the time for anything that may have been held back, and Essek cannot move enough even to brush away the salt that has dried beneath Caleb’s eyes. 

He listens, and he does not respond. Not with how little emotion Caleb puts into his voice, with all of the history that he is only learning now. Not with the knowledge that Caleb walked onto that ship, welcomed the Empire, and then watched as it was left in ruin.

Once Caleb has stopped talking, they are both quiet for a long time. Caleb is staring up at the stars now, the ice of his eyes as dark as the ocean below them, and more than that fight, more than the prospect of dying here on the ocean, this is the most painful part of this night, that they are inches apart and yet might as well be stone.

“And he still has a beacon, with almost unlimited potential for what he might do,” Essek murmurs, a hum of a thought more than words. It is easier to analyze the larger problems of their conflicts than the barriers they face right here. “I can only imagine what kind of power he has already synthesized from such an artefact.”

“Ja,” Caleb agrees. He hasn’t moved at all, though every new comment about his former teacher seems to cause his muscles to tense, and Essek steers them away from that line of discussion, now that Caleb has expunged every confession he seems to wish to offer. 

It is impossible to decipher from the expression on his face whether he is seeking punishment or penance. 

“If someone finds us,” he says, attempting optimism, “at least we have the beacon. It was not all a waste.”

“And if no one finds us, then we will soon be at the bottom of the ocean, and the beacon with us.”

The moonlight is a mirror in Caleb’s eyes, the freckles on his face a reflection of the stars, and Essek can see the universe in him, and for a moment he cannot bring himself to breathe, let alone speak. The soft resignation of the way he stares into the sky, like he is soaking in the heavens as a final meal, makes Essek want to drown.

He inhales long and slow and reminds himself how to breathe.

“The gods are cruel to leave us to languish here.” He’s not generally one to appeal to the gods, even to chastise them, but this circumstance feels like it calls for a little blasphemy. They’ve earned that much, stuck in this horrible irony, two corpses not yet dead. “It would be a mercy to die already.”

“Perhaps for you,” Caleb says, and for the first time, he turns to look at him, and Essek’s throat dries. It’s not the salt in the air that snatches the breath from his lungs. Caleb speaks softly in Zemnian, too fast for him to even follow the sounds of the words, and Essek flushes at the softness in his voice, in his eyes. 

“If you’re going to start speaking a foreign language then I’ll talk in Undercommon to myself.” Essek crosses his arms gently over his chest and turns skyward, gazing into the abyss of the night. No hint of the sun has mottled it yet. Though he’s trying to appear at least somewhat disgruntled, he already feels as though he is falling off the edge of the world, so untethered to anything. At least Caleb is something solid for his gaze to rest upon.

“Forgive me,” Caleb sighs, and when Essek turns back to him, he’s still staring, the same way he seemed to consume the stars. “You are right. The gods are cruel.”

He knows he said it first, but Essek has no idea what to make of that.

“Caleb…” The name falls out of his mouth in a breath, and he brings the hand closest up to latch onto the sleeve of Caleb’s coat, which he did not abandon even as waterlogged as it is. His spellbooks are tucked away in a pocket dimension, no longer under his arms; Essek can remember when he first started teaching him dunamancy, pulling the books from leather holsters wrapped around his shoulders. He’s come a long way since then, but this coat still holds his transmuter stone and his spell components, and any hope they might have of getting to dry land. 

“They like their jokes,” Caleb says, and glances upward at the moon. It’s descending now, toward the western horizon, the second a distant crescent rising, and a soft puff of laughter bubbles in his chest as he looks back down. “This was not the night I thought I would spend with you.”

Yes, Essek thinks, this is indeed what drowning feels like. 

It is fine though; he would let this moment crash over him, drag him into the deep. But for the first time tonight he does not ask the gods for a quiet death, asleep beneath the waves. “No, nor I you,” he says finally, and he can barely hear himself over the rush of the sea.

“Then I suppose we’re both just fools who have left our fates up to chance.” 

“I—“ Essek has no idea why this is so hard to say, when they’ve already confessed as much as they have tonight. “I should’ve asked you to stay, after dinner. When you walked me home.”

“You should’ve.” Caleb wears the smallest teasing smile, and Essek can’t help but laugh himself. He can feel the dehydration in the laughter, another cruel joke of creation, how there is so much water to be found here and none of it with the capacity to quench his thirst.

It seems fitting that the remaining span of this lifetime be spent wanting, as the seconds continue to tick by. He can count them each, another infinity that holds the potential for satiation, but he will not sink them both to satisfy his own thirst.

Caleb shuffles the beacon into his chest, wrapping his far arm over it, and Essek barely cares enough to suggest that he move very carefully, but it is secure beneath his arm, his hand spread wide over its smooth surface. He brings his other hand, now free, up to pry Essek’s fingers from the fabric of his cloak and intertwine them.

“There,” he says, with satisfaction, their fingers interlaced, and Essek has held his hand while they’ve teleported on numerous occasions, but this time is different. There is no utility in this grasp. It is only comfort, the reminder that the other is there. That they are not stone, and they are not drowned. “If we escape this ocean, it will be together.”

Essek nods and closes his eyes, and doesn’t feel quite so much like he’s falling into a tailspin now that he has something to cling to. He drifts to sleep that way, the waves lulling him into a trance, exhaustion taking him though he has no idea whether he will slip below the surface when he falls unconscious. But that small warm comfort is enough, and the moon overhead sings him to sleep with her white light. 

This is not what drowning feels like, not when he wakes on dry land at the warm touch of the sun, and rolls over to shield his face from the light. Sand coats the side of his face from where he has been laying here, no longer adrift, and in his hand Caleb’s fingers remain, his eyes hazy with the same exhaustion that Essek has shaken, though the sun is still sapping his strength the longer he remains beneath its rays. 

He presses himself up, incredulous at the sight of the jungle beyond the rough sand of the beach, shaded and dangerous but gloriously, vividly green. And just inside the shadows, his eyes catch the glint of fresh water, the sight reaching him before the sound of a burbling creek. “Caleb,” he whispers, and helps him sit up, still blinking sleep from his eyes. “We are somehow alive.”

Caleb is still wrapped around the beacon, tucked into his torso like it is a life raft, and Essek gently pries it from his hands. When Caleb looks to protest, Essek shakes his head and sets it aside on the sand. Wherever they are, they seem to be alone for now, and their quiet beach will stand to hold their beacon for a little longer.

“We need water,” he says, and drags them both, limbs stiff from spending the night unmoving on a broken, wooden ship deck, toward the creek. “We need water, and we need to get back to Rosohna—“

Once Caleb is upright he rushes forward, catching Essek’s jaw in his hands just as they reach the shade of the treeline; out of the sun, the cool air of the jungle washing over them both, the kiss that Caleb gives him is more like breaking the surface of an ocean than finding water to drink. 

This is not drowning, he thinks as he reciprocates, this is living. 

The joy of the gods' jokes is that there is always a punchline, and Essek will laugh now.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
